Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Hear and Now

You really are in good hands listening to a John Paynter record. The man is simply a genius. I love how much respect he has for the imagination of children. Here he has them imitating car and bird noises and improvising 12 note melodies on woodblocks while chanting white magic spells in some echoey gynmasium. Really mindbending stuff if you're into this sort of thing. I've been looking for this little record for ages and finally found this battered 99p copy on le Bay. This is the companion record to a music ed. book that I've blogged earlier. Simply amazing sounds coming out of these classroom sessions, like Ligeti soundtracking The Owl Service or something. I love how Paynter thinks about avant garde sounds as a starting point rather than an end point for music. Ideal for the beginning musician if you think about it. Enjoy the music and also the smooth soothings of the temptress introducing the record...

Hello Ben. I thought I'd alert you to the existence of another seven inch on Universal Edition with music in a very similar vein: "Music For Young Players" introduced by John Hosier with music by George Self and performed by Pupils Of St. Anne's School, Southampton. Again, very avant garde in approach and similar instrumentation: percussion, glockenspiels etc. My copy is missing the original sleeve unfortunately (assuming there ever was one...). Love your blog BTW!